Now, I've been researching weapons for the equipment list. I started out with knives. I want to touch on the wide variety available in this time period, but I really don't want to write stats for 40+ knives that basically have the same combat functions. So I came up with a different way to handle it. Instead of stats for individual knives, I have stats for four knife types. A couple unique knives get their own stats, but most belong to one of the four categories.
Fighting Knife
This is a large bladed knife, such as a Bowie knife or military dagger.
Chopping Knife
This is a chopping blade, such as a machete, bolo, panga, or mandau
Small Knife
This is a small knife with a fixed blade, such as a boot knife or neck knife.
Deploying Knife
This is a knife with a blade that is stored in the handle until use. Folding knives, gravity knives, and butterfly knives are all examples.
With firearms, the same basic idea applies. Instead of inventing a whole bunch of different designs with their own stats, I've created basic stat categories. For revolvers, I have three.
Cap and Ball
These are old muzzle loading rifles, in which a powder charge and ball are packed down the barrel once for each chamber, and percussion caps are added to nipples on the cylinder. They take forever to load and are less accurate than cartridge firearms, so these weapons have become obsolescent. They are still occasionally found, however.
Side Gate
These cartridge revolvers are loaded by opening a gate at the back of the cylinder and pushing a round in, rotating the chamber by load, inserting another round, and so on until loaded. Spent casing have to be extracted one by one by pressing on a lever under the barrel. These weapons are simple and sturdy, but reloading does take a long time, although not as long as with a cap and ball weapon.
Swing Out/Break Open
A swing out revolver has a cylinder that swings out on a hinge and usually has an extractor capable of extracting all the spent cartridges at once. A break open revolver breaks open at the breech, tipping the barrel and cylinder downwards, and also usually has an extractor that can extract all the spent casings at once. Both are quicker to load than the side gate model, if a bit more expensive and slightly more complicated, and are identical in game statistics.
Now, here is where I run into a wall: caliber. I need to determine how much it matters. Should revolvers just come with a flat damage value, or should I have a list of damage by caliber? I lean towards flat damage values, but is that the right decision? Are people going to want .45s and .38s to feel different in game terms, even if that complicates things more than I think it should? What about small characters? Should they use smaller guns than medium characters? Does that mean they need to fire smaller calibers, or just smaller guns fit in their hands better but lost ammunition capacity and range do to their size?
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For firearms, caliber doesn't have as big an effect on 'damage' to the target as much as velocity. An 8mm round from a WWII-era rifle will do much more damage than a .50 cal round from a muzzle-loader. This is due to cavitation.
If velocity and tech level are all the same, I would use d6 or d8 for handguns, d10 or d12 for rifles/longarms. Larger calibers can be distinguised with a bonus to the damage die (e.g. a .45 would be d8, but a .50 would be d8+1 or somesuch). There should be realtively little difference in damage among weapons of the same class if they are of the same tech level.
Check out the BRP System (what Call of Cthulhu is based on) for modern weapon damage to see realtivistic damage ratings.
If you want some differentiation, just divide them into heavy and light revolvers (keep medium too if you want). Bump the die size one for heavy, but make the weapon weigh more.
My father has an old Webley top break revolver converted to fire american .45 ACP. The thing is like holding a cinder block at arm's length.
With a swing-out or top-break you get to use speed-loaders.
It's all about "feel".
A scatter gun should feel different in use compared to a normal gun. Pathfinder uses "make an attack roll against all the targets in the area" to give that fistful of dice feel of a scatter weapon.
On the flipside, you can do multiple damage dice instead (like 3d4 instead of 1d12) to get that feel.
For different calibers, decide how you want the feel to work. It's supposed to be a "bigger" bullet, right? Perhaps bumping the damage up one size category could work.
The average damage of 1d6+1 and 1d8 are the same (4.5). 1d6+1 has better guaranteed damage, while 1d8 has a higher maximum. A bit of a wash (unless you allow that +1 to apply to crits, I guess).
But ultimately, what gives a more visceral feel to shooting with a higher caliber? Adding +1 to your damage sheet, or picking up the bigger sided die?
And now we can combine the effects. Switching from birdshot to buckshot on a scatter weapon can mean 3d4 damage to 3d6 damage. :)
*Edit*
The added bonus of basing it on size, is that it fits seamlessly in with different sized weapons. A small character's small gun using a larger caliber just uses a damage die one size larger (so a .45 in the hands of a gnome would be doing 1d6 damage, similar to a .38 in the hands of a human).
Haha... just noticed. The average damage of a d8 is "4.5". Nice starting point for calibers, if you ask me.
After some thought, I'm really thinking I may just take caliber out of it as far as damage is concerned. I looked through my D20 Modern Weapons Locker, and a .45, a 9mm, a .357, and a .38 all have the same damage value. If it works there, it should work here. Furthermore, smaller guns still fire rounds like the .38, though they do have shorter barrels, so small characters would lose out on range and not damage. The only thing the caliber of the weapon would effect is whether you can scavenge ammo from dead and wounded people and abandoned areas. Large characters, however, may have larger rounds like a .50. Anything above large or below small doesn't have access to mass produced guns sized for them.
As for small guns like .22s and derringers, those have a separate range of types.
I'm thinking that shotguns HURT at close range (3d6 dmg compared to 2d4 for the average revolver and 2d6 for the average rifle), but they have a small range increment, and lost damage rapidly as they leave it. Birdshot can attack everything in a 5 foot square (though it doesn't do the mega damage buckshot does, it'll kill a bird), but buckshot needs to be aimed at a single target (IRL scatter guns don't spread their shot enough to hit multiple targets until they've hit a range where accuracy is gone).
My own firearms attempt had scatter guns either as a line effect (normal), or a cone (short/flared barrel). The cone would have half the range of the line.